Death Fail
by Arzosah
Summary: Sometimes you're immortal, and sometimes you have no excuse. Akatsuki crack. Please read and review.


Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

AN: I just love large-group-small-house scenarios, and the Akatsuki are practically asking for it. Don't need to machinate too much to get them into that kind of situation. So without further ado, enjoy this piece of pure Akatsuki crack.

**Death Fail**

"All of us? Together? Breathing the same oxygen? Are you out of your goddamn mind?!"

"Relax, I'll be there supervising you."

"You _are_ out of your goddamn mind!"

Unfortunately, despite all of Kakuzu's protestations, nothing would change Pein's mind. Akatsuki was under lockdown whether they liked it or not. And it was a given that none of them liked it. Furthermore their fearless leader with a god-complex believed that his mere presence would be enough to avert disaster. Ha!

And that was how all of them ended up confined to a single safe-house, one that wasn't nearly big enough to house nine S-ranked criminals. Not if they wanted to stay out of each other's way to avoid conflict. Tension and tempers were already near the boiling point, and it had only been a week. What was worse, was that Pein's idea of 'supervision' meant keeping most of them in one room for extended periods of time.

Like that very moment, for instance. Seven hair-trigger killers in one lounge, with very little to do to keep them from going stir-crazy. Kakuzu had reduced himself to repeating interest rate calculations in his head, Konan was obsessively folding and unfolding an origami crane, Sasori was compulsively ratcheting and loosening a single joint on one of his puppets, Kisame was fidgeting in his seat, looking horribly uncomfortable, Deidara was neurotically molding silly-putty and generally looking like he just wanted to light something on fire and be done with it, and Pein was sitting rock solid fixing a blank stare at a smudge on the far wall. Zetsu seemed to be exempt from all this, and was in the basement talking to himself. Hidan had managed to escape a few hours ago, muttering something about Jashin, in the kitchen, with a lead pipe. Somehow in all the chaos, no one seemed to notice the fact that Itachi was quietly tying a hangman's noose.

It was quite obvious that all of their anti-insanity efforts were doomed to fail. It was just as Kakuzu said: Pein was out of his goddamn mind, putting them through this torture.

It was around the time that the stitch-nin was ready to finally snap and rip someone limb from limb that Hidan wandered back in. All eyes looked to the silver-haired fanatic, and not a single one knew how to respond to what they were seeing.

"Um… a little help here?" Hidan spoke, made unusually sheepish from all the stares. "Seriously, I'm stuck."

And indeed he was. The immortal had somehow managed to impale himself on a lead pipe. Twice. The metal ran through first his ribs, then coiled tightly around is upper body, and then through the middle of his belly, making it impossible for him to lift his arms and free himself. Just to make sure everyone could see that fact, he flapped his arms a little for emphasis. With all eyes trained on the veritable freak accident, no one seemed to notice that Itachi had completed, and was very satisfied with, his hangman's noose.

"What the fuck, un?!" Deidara blurted out, his reaction perfectly understandable. It looked like he was having trouble wrapping his mind around the situation.

Konan had froze, her face screwed up. It looked like she was trying desperately not to break out into hysterical laughter.

"I'm not even going to _ask_ how you pulled _that_ off," Kakuzu grumbled, deliberately looking away, trying to set an example and avert anymore discussion of exactly what kind of fail this was. To him, it was just another one of those things that he'd simply rather not know, for the sake of his sanity. Like what exactly Orochimaru giggled about late at night while he was still in the organization. But, shit, it must take some talent for the immortal to fail that spectacularly… damn it, don't think about it!

"Yeah, long story." Hidan glanced away and shuffled his weight from foot to foot. If he hadn't been doing that he might have noticed Itachi getting up and examining the rafters. As it was, no one did.

"You didn't get that pipe out of the plumbing system, did you?" Pein asked sternly, eyeing the immortal's current tool of self-injury.

"No it was just lying there." The immortal scuffed one foot on the floor before suddenly getting hysterical. "I mean it, I'm fucking stuck! Will someone get me a goddamn blowtorch or something?!"

"I have one in my workshop," Sasori calmly assured him, setting aside his current project and getting up. "Come on, let's go."

Though his facial expression remained the same anyone who knew the puppet could tell that he was relieved to finally have an excuse to get out of the room. Hidan could tell, and didn't even offer his usual token protest when Sasori gave him a little shove out the door.

Everyone noticed when the rafter Itachi had been trying to hang himself from broke under his weight. And once again, no one quite knew how to respond to what they were seeing.

"Shit! Itachi are you alright?!" Kisame was up and over the back of the couch in two seconds once his mind had caught up with what had just happened. As ridiculously funny as it was, concern for his clearly emotionally disturbed teammate came first.

Konan could no longer contain it: she burst out laughing so hard she fell out of her seat.

"What the fuck, un?!" Deidara still seemed unable to articulate. That and one of his hands looked like it was choking around the silly-putty.

Sasori could only blink owlishly at the scene, his eyes so wide it looked like they were about to pop right out of his head.

"Seriously, man: how the _fuck_ can you screw _that_ up?!" Hidan's own predicament was quickly forgotten in favor of laughing at someone else's expense. And to someone with years of suicide experience, there was simply no excuse for that kind of failure.

By now Zetsu had quietly poked his head up through the floorboards to see what all the commotion was about. Both halves were effectively stunned into silence.

"Well there's something you don't see everyday…" Kakuzu decided to also file _this_ under 'don't want to know'. That was probably the only reason he deigned to point out that that very rafter had successfully carried the immortal masochist's greater, not to mention more enthusiastic, weight in the past without showing any signs of wear and tear.

"Okay, that's it. We're putting you on Prozac," Pein sighed as he got up and moved around Hidan and Sasori to leave the room, clearly planning on starting the Uchiha on the medication as soon as possible.

Itachi, meanwhile, just lay there on his back amidst the debris, stunned and humiliated. He couldn't imagine this turning out any worse than it already had.

"…Ow…"


End file.
